Too Cold
by Thomas Van Ness Leavitt
Summary: When a blizzard knocks the power out, Maou has to save Suzano from freezing to death using his body heat. Can he survive the aftermath? Or will an outraged Suzano-chan smash him to a pulp with her giant mallet?
1. Chapter 1: Body Heat

It was dinnertime at the Devil's Castle, albeit a smaller gathering than normal. Ashiya was away working at a temp gig, earning money to pay off another one of Urushihara's unsanctioned on-line shopping splurges, and the usual assortment of regular drop-ins, like Emi Yusa and Chiho Sasaki, were absent, likely discouraged by the blizzard that was busily blanketing the city in snow. That left only the one-time Demon General and voluntarily fallen angel, along with his King, now going by the name of Sadao Maou, to dine on the cooking of their next door neighbor and frequent visitor, Suzano Kamazuki, in their one-room second story tenement apartment.

Leaning back and groaning contentedly, Urushihara declared "Mmm... I love it when Suzuno cooks for us! Ashiya needs to take on temp work more often!"

"She cooks for us even when he isn't working, you know that. We shouldn't presume on her generosity," said Maou.

"I don't mind cooking, especially when Ashiya isn't around to make sure you're fed properly," said Suzuno, their next door neighbor and frequent visitor. "Especially Maou," she thought, "He's so appreciative of everything I do!"

The howl of the wind outside suddenly went up a notch, and the power flicked off, then on again, then emphatically off. Grumbling in annoyance, Urushihara scooted over to his laptop, announcing, "Internet's down. Ugh." Slapping the cover closed, he pulled out his portable gaming system, put on a headset, and proceeded to zone out. Suzano and Maou continued to chat for a while longer until she decided to call it a night.

The blizzard had clearly done a number on the electricity supply to the entire building, as when Suzano fumbled her way next door through the darkened hallway, her apartment was also without power... and freezing, not having had the benefit of multiple bodies and a slowly cooling hotplate to warm it. Crawling into bed, she found herself shivering even in a flannel nightgown and under a winter comforter. "Winter in Japan is brutal!" she thought.

Roughly an hour later, she woke up, shivering even more intensely than before. "I'm going to freeze to death if I don't do something! Maybe Maou-san's apartment will be warmer."

Tucking her numbed feet into slippers, Suzano wrapped a blanket around her and stumbled towards the door. A few moments later, Maou heard a loud thump and crash in the hallway.

"What was that?!" said Maou.

Urushihara, absorbed in his ZX Bita game and wearing headphones, ignored him completely.

"I'm going to go take a look," said Maou.

Urushihara didn't look up. Sighing, Maou stood up and walked to the door, opening it up to see Suzano crumpled at his feet, shivering convulsively. "I'm f-f-f-freez-z-z-ing..." she said, plaintively, teeth chattering uncontrollably. Maou didn't know what to say, so he picked her up and pulled her inside the door.

"Urushihara!" he shouted.

No response.

"Urushihara! Get those things off your head and help me here!"

Still no response. Grumbling in frustrating, Maou yanked the headphones off Urushihara's head and knocked the game out of his hands. "Pay attention when I talk to you!"

"What the... I was one level away from beating the Big Boss!" Urushihara said, indignantly.

"Nevermind that! Suzano-chan appears to be freezing to death! What do I do? How do humans deal with this? Find me an answer on the Internet!" said Maou.

"Umm, dude... powers out. Internet's down, like I said. But maybe I can look up something on Suzano's phone instead," said Urushihara. Maou's antiquated flip phone clearly wasn't going to be of any use in the matter.

"Whatever. Just do it!"

Urushihara went next door and found Suzano's phone lying next to her bed. Fortunately, the screen was unlocked, and the cellphone network was as yet unaffected by power outages, so he was able to do a quick search for "freezing to death" on "Wahoo! Japan".

"We need to warm her up. When nothing else is available, human body heat will typically do the trick," he said, returning to their room.

"What does that mean?" said Maou.

"We gotta wrap ourselves around her until she warms up enough to quit shivering. Probably stay that way too, as long as the power's out." said Urushihara, in an annoyed tone. "Guess I'm not taking that boss down anytime soon. Humans are so annoyingly frail."

"Really?" said Maou, flushing at the thought of close contact with the lovely maiden. "O.K. If that's what it takes. Let's do it!"

"Drag her over to the futon, and we'll get each get on one side of her. Our bodies run at a slightly higher temperature than normal humans, even in this reduced state without our magic, so that should help speed up the process," said Urushihara.

"Her feet are bare without those slippers, so we should put some socks on her before we tuck her in, and we need to make sure there's a double layer of blankets over her legs as well, since that nightgown is likely to bunch up a bit," said Urushihara.

Pulling a pair of fuzzy socks out of the dresser, Maou grabbed one of her feet.

"Yikes! They're ice cold! Dang! We need to warm her up quick," he thought. He couldn't help but notice how muscular her calves were, "She has really nice legs!" He then shook his head, "Why am I thinking about that at a time like this?! I need to focus."

Setting the now delirious, shivering young woman between them, they pulled the covers up and slid in beside her, Urushihara curled up against her back, Maou wrapped around her in front, tucking her hands into his armpits. "BRRRRR! So COLD!" he blurted, "It's like curling up with a block of ice!"

Urushihara just looked at him disgustedly, "Do I hear the all-powerful Demon King complaining about a little chilliness?"

Gradually, as she warmed up, Suzano's shivering decreased, and eventually, she dozed off, "Mmm..." she sighed contently, unconsciously snuggling herself up firmly against Maou's chest and tucking her head into his shoulder. Maou slipped his hands under her waist and around her back, feeling awkward about the entire situation, but not knowing what else he could do.

After a few more minutes, he began to notice... things. Like, how nice her hair smelled, and how soft various portions of her body that were in direct contact felt. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been this close to a woman, certainly not since he and Ashiya had landed in Japan, and the Demon women he was familiar with from Ente Isla were far more muscular and less curvy than human ones, even slightly built ones like Suzano. This led to a new round of panic, as he felt his human body begin to react in an all to predictable fashion to the intimate contact.

"What do I do?" he thought, frantically searching his mind for a way to quell his reaction. "She'll never forgive me." Images of a gigantic hammer wielded by an enraged Church assassin smashing everything in sight ran through his head. "Not good. Not good. Not good at all." She mumbled in her sleep, and snuggled against him even more tightly. "Not good at all," he thought, as he felt a new heat where her thighs now met his leg.

Then a thought popped into his head... a character in one of his favorite mangas had been in a similar situation, and had dealt with it by thinking of the most unsexy things possible. What had he listed? "Baseball. Cricket. Shinzo Abe. Xi Jinping. Theresa May. Angela Merkel. Nancy Pelosi. Hilary Clinton." The last few names escaped from him in a low mumble.

Suzano drifted up out of sleep just in time to hear the final part of that list. "What are you mumbling about," she asked, only half awake. "Just a spell to keep us warm." "Oh, O.K." It was so nice and cozy under the covers, curled up against him. She fell back asleep. In the morning, the power had come back on, Urushihara had returned to his spot in the closet, and Maou was up and cooking breakfast.

"Rise and shine, sleepyhead!" he said, cheerily.

The events of last night were a blur. "Wha... what am I doing in your apartment?!"

"You almost froze to death after the power went out. We found you collapsed in the hallway outside, and had to warm you up. Was touch and go there for a while, but you managed to pull through with no damage," he said.

"Oh! Thank you! I'm sorry to have inconvenienced you!"

"That's o.k. Small repayment for all the cooking and cleaning you do around here! I'm going to make sure we have a couple of charcoal powered kotasus on hand in case the power goes out again!"


	2. Chapter 2: A Mean Right Hook

"Theresa May. Angela Merkel. Nancy Pelosi. Hilary Clinton. I've never heard of those gods before," thought Suzano.

She knew very little about this world beyond her extensive studies of Showa era Japan, and so did not realize this was a list of older female politicians. At least, until she started typing the names into Goggle. "Now why would he be chanting those particular names?" she thought, idly. Then, as she looked at their pictures, and thought about the details of the recent night's events, the dots connected in her head. "AIEEEEE!" she shrieked, storming out of her room in a fury.

A few seconds later, Maou heard her pounding on the door, demanding that he open up right now.

When he did, she greeted him with a solid uppercut to the chin, "Hentai!" Slap! "Harasser!" Smack! "Degenerate! How dare you! I'm never cooking for you again! Hmph! Hilary Clinton indeed!"

He fell back on his ass into his apartment, dazed, and with a final shout of outrage, she turned her back and stomped away.

"What was that about?!" he wondered, rubbing his bruised chin in bewilderment as he lay on the floor. "Human women are so unpredictable!"


	3. Chapter 3: Digging The Hole Deeper

After much complaining about three straight days of pork bowl takeout from Urushihara, he went next door to apologize, the "Hilary Clinton" comment having clued him in as to why Suzano was so pissed off. "I guess she realized that wasn't actually a spell. Ugh."

It was fairly late in the evening, so without thinking, she greeted him in a loosely hanging light flannel nightgown. "What do you want at this hour, you miserable rat-faced chikan?!"

As he began to mumble an apology, his involuntarily glanced downwards, following the curve of her shoulder where the strap had fallen down, to... noticing where he eyes were tracking, she took only a moment to react. Thwack! "HENTAI!"

"No, I'm sorry, I..." he backpedaled desperately.

Smack! "Degenerate demon-spawn freak!" she shouted. Slap! Pow!

Staggering back further into the hallway, his eyes once again involuntarily tracked downward, causing her to go completely ballistic. Materializing her giant mallet, she shouted, "I'll smash you to a pulp, you pathetic hentai rake!"

Realizing that the situation was completely out of control, he teleported, not even really thinking about where he was going. When he landed with a thump, having materialized several feet above ground, he found himself on the doorstep of Chiho Susaki's family farm. "Yikes. That was close."

When he knocked on the door, he was greeted by Hinako, Chiho's cousin-in-law and the wife of her "Big Bro" Kazuma, holding her baby, Hitoshi-Kun. She took one look at his battered, disheveled state, and exclaimed, "What happened to you?! Come in, right now, and I'll get you cleaned up."

He muttered something about "hotheaded women misinterpreting everything" and she pried the entire sordid story out of him as she bandaged him up.

"...and then when she pulled the mallet out, I realized I had to get out of there before she took the entire house down around our heads, and I guess when I teleported I was thinking about getting as far away from her as I could, and since this is pretty much the most distant place we've ventured to date, I wound up here."

Laughing, she exclaimed, "You poor boy. You sure have some serious tsundere to deal with! Why don't you get some sleep and we'll talk it over in the morning and see what we can do to fix things up between you two!"

"But Chi-san..."

"Don't you worry your handsome little head. I'm sure she'd prefer you intact, rather than being smashed to a pulp by a mallet wielding maniac."

"I guess that's true."

The next morning, when he stumbled down to the kitchen, she had a pallet of newly picked strawberries set out on the kitchen table, and was already busy cooking away.

"The path to a woman's heart is through the stomach, just as much as it is for a man. No woman can resist fresh strawberries and cream, or homemade strawberry cheesecake, or fresh strawberry jam on home cooked bread."


	4. Chapter 4: Food Good

Later that day, having teleported home again with the freshly baked goods to ensure their continued freshness, he had Ashiya blindfold him, and then guide him next door.

"You knock on the door and greet her. That way, there's a chance she won't lose it completely before I can get a word in edgewise," said Maou.

Rapping on the door, Ashiya called out, "Suzano-san! It's Ashiya."

She opened up the door, noticing Maou in the process. "What's he doing here?!"

"He's here to apologize," said Ashiya.

"As if! He clearly can't even bring himself to look me in the eye!" exclaimed Suzano, and slammed the door shut in their faces.

"That went well," said Maou.

Mumbling an apology through the door, he left the food and a note, then retreated with Ashiya back to their room.

A few minutes later, they heard her door open, then close again. Reading the note, she looked down at the food and thought, "Seeing as how Hinako made all this effort to cook for me, I guess I have to accept the food. Still not forgiving that scumbag hentai rake demon-spawn degenerate however!"

Moments later, Maou and Ashiya heard several squeals of delight: "DELICIOUS!" "YUMMY!" "SO GOOD!"


	5. Chapter 5: All Is Forgiven

A couple of days later, Maou heard a knock on the door and answered it. A panicked expression crossed his face when he looked down to see Suzano standing there. "Please! Don't hit me! I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I respect you, I swear, I'd never..."

Suzano let him go on for a while, then held up a hand to stop him. "I know you're a basically good guy, Maou-san. I apologize for overreacting. You can't help being a guy, or a demon for that matter. I thank you for saving my life, and for the yummy food from Hinako!"

"Would you mind if I cook for you tonight?" she asked, shyly.

Behind them, a shout of joy rang out from Urushihara. "Yay! I'm so tired of pork bowls."

Suzano smiled, and so did Maou, and so things went back to normal (for whatever that means when you're a Demon King in exile and one of his generals, being cooked for by one of the most notorious assassins of the Holy Church of Ente Isla).


	6. Epilogue: The Friendzone

Suzano was cooking dinner again, alone in the apartment except for Maou, since Ashiya had dragged Urushihara over to Chiho's place to work on her mother's computer. Maou sat at the kotatsu in the middle of the room, reading a manga, and drinking coffee.

"Maou-san?" said Suzano.

"Yes?"

"Do you find me attractive?"

Maou's spat coffee out his nose and started stuttering incoherently.

Suzano laughed loudly at his flustered reaction. "It's fine if you don't answer. I'm just messing with you. ...but part of me really does want to know what you think."

Calming down a bit, Maou laughed weakly in response, then said, "You're very pretty, Suzano-san. You're also really scary. I'm happy to have you as a friend, that's enough for me."

Smiling, she turned back to the hotplate and said, "I'm happy to have you as a friend, too, Maou-san."


End file.
